


aut inveniam viam aut faciam (either I shall find a way or I shall make one)

by sinequanon



Series: rebellion and revolution [7]
Category: Bleach, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Curses, F/M, Memory Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 07:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15836838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinequanon/pseuds/sinequanon
Summary: Ichigo makes a deal to save everyone he loves. Years later, the Hale pack saves him in return.





	aut inveniam viam aut faciam (either I shall find a way or I shall make one)

**Author's Note:**

> This story, like the last one, is a couple of years old. It exists because a) I like crossovers; and b) I wanted to see if I could feasibly smash my two favorite fandoms together.
> 
> This isn’t so much a full-on crossover as it is a “Ichigo meets Teen Wolf” fic. Canon knowledge isn’t necessary but fandom knowledge might be, particularly for Bleach. Let me know what you think.
> 
> As far as the pairing goes, I had originally intended this to be a Lydia/Peter/Stiles story, so there are hints of that in here, just not enough (in my opinion) to tag.

In the end, Ichigo Kurosaki both gained and lost everything in his final fight in Soul Society.

Maybe he had taken a hit to the head at some point in that last fight because he didn't even blink when the woman appeared and offered him a chance to fix everything that had gone wrong since the death of Kaien Shiba all those years ago.

All the death and destruction of the past few years would never happen...if Ichigo agreed to be forgotten.

Literally. Completely.

The price for everyone's lives was every memory of the young man who had given everything to save them.

Ichigo looked around him one last time, tried to commit everything to memory, and agreed.

<> <>

_Fifteen years later_

Ichigo hated medical conferences. He loved surgery, loved putting people back together instead of tearing them apart, but this part he abhorred. While it was interesting to hear of the latest techniques and promising treatments, these gatherings were also full of self-important idiots who who did nothing but extol their own accomplishments to anyone who was unfortunate enough to be in hearing range.

It was only the second day of the week-long event, and Ichigo was already contemplating violence against multiple attendees.

Unfortunately, those kinds of thoughts always led him to other thoughts, memories of Chad and Uryuu and Orihime...of his family...of Zangetsu and Shiro and...everything. He wasn't eighteen anymore (hadn't been for awhile) but the pain of loss still flared sharply from time to time, and when it did, he wasn't fit company for anyone.

So.

He wasn't the least bit ashamed of the fact that he was essentially hiding in a darkened stairwell while he pulled himself together.

The former substitute Shinigami had almost convinced himself to rejoin the bustling conference when he was stopped by the strangest conversation coming from farther up the stairwell.

“Do you need to scream?” a man's voice asked calmly.

“No...it feels different,” a woman's voice floated down to him. “I've been sensing it since we’ve been here.” The voice paused. “It's not a ghost, but it's...something.”

“Please tell me we don't need to do an exorcism,” the man's voice answered. “Peter would never let us hear the end of it, and the SDIU would undoubtedly make me fill out paperwork on it, despite the fact that I'm supposedly on vacation.”

Ichigo chuckled to himself. Until he had first encountered the Supernatural Detection and Intervention Unit ten years ago, he hadn't realized how many supernatural creatures actually existed: vampires and werewolves and other things that he had assumed only appeared in fairy tales seemed to be crawling all over Europe and the United States. He was shocked to learn that not only did the SDIU know about Soul Society, they had known who _he_ was, and offered him both a stipend for medical school and a job afterward, if he was so inclined. The thought of belonging again, of fighting for justice for all creatures was appealing but ultimately, he had taken the education and passed on the job.

He told them he needed to find his own way in the world. No one at the agency seemed the least bit surprised by his choice, and wished him well all the same.

“It's not that.” The woman's voice was closer now, but Ichigo found himself reluctant to move, even if it meant avoiding detection. “Remember when we went to Japan a couple of years ago?”

Ichigo stilled, memories crowding at the back of his brain. He took a deep breath. The people attached to the voices would be able to see him soon, he knew, but he still couldn't convince his feet to move.

“We'll have to find the Shinigami later, then,” the man said. “You have a presentation to give in twenty minutes. The session organizer is probably on her second litter of kittens already.”

“Actually…”

The voice came from directly behind him this time, and Ichigo barely managed not to jump in surprise. Instead, he turned to see a confident-looking redhead with a barely-there smirk on her face and a laid-back brunette who was openly grinning at him.

“There you are,” Lydia said brightly, as if they had been waiting for Ichigo to arrive and not the other way around. She threaded her free arm through Ichigo's and started moving them toward the hall for her presentation. “Come along. We’ll go to dinner after this and get to know each other better.”

Ichigo just stared and followed numbly; thankfully, Dr. Martin's research was the most interesting of the week.

<> <>

_Twenty years later_

“A dreamcatcher? No offense, but I think my problems go a little bit deeper than bad dreams,” Ichigo said dubiously.

Stiles gave him a knowing look that never failed to inspire the confidence of his subordinates or his pack--even when they were about to be killed and eaten by killer mermaids, for example--and pushed the item into the other man’s hands.

“Just hang it up,” Stiles instructed with a smile and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Also, Peter wants everyone home for dinner tonight to talk about the pack reunion next week. You should come. It’ll be great.”

Sometimes, Ichigo still couldn't believe how lucky he was to have met Stiles and Lydia at that conference. The rest of that week had been filled with Lydia's joyful evisceration of her colleagues, Stiles's hilariously deadpan “ignorance” when dealing with selfsame colleagues, and a memorable night where the two of them got him drunk and made him spill his entire life’s story.

The next morning, Lydia had clicked her tongue at him, Stiles brought him biscuits and gravy, and the two of them had invited him home with them. They told him about the pack--made up mostly of disparate people their own age--and of all of the monsters they had fought before Peter and Derek Hale came to town and took them under wing.

Ichigo had blustered, of course, and then inexplicably followed them home, anyway, transporting his life from Malaysia to California with only a little effort on his part. The rest was arranged by Lydia and Peter, and before he knew what had happened he was sitting in a living room surrounded by werewolves, a banshee, and two humans who accepted his eccentricities with a shrug, a smile, and a standing offer to punch someone in the face on his behalf.

The pack wasn't like his other friends--though Boyd reminded him a lot of Chad--and they didn't want to replace his family, Peter promised, but he would always have a place with them, if it was what he wanted, powers or no.

Ichigo found that he _did_ want it, and had never regretted it, even after he realized that he had joined one of the most notorious (and amusing) packs in the country.

Like him, they understood adversity. They knew what it meant to face unstoppable foes and survive. It slowly became easier to talk to Lydia about being a Soul Reaper, to talk to Boyd about little sisters. It _helped_ when he and Stiles got drunk one night and he talked about encroachment, and Stiles talked about the nogitsune, and they both slept better than they had in months.

The next morning, Ichigo had asked Stiles about the SDIU.

“I've always wanted to help people; the SDIU just helps me to that on a wider scale than I'd be able to even as part of the Beacon Hills pack.” Stiles explained. He flushed and rubbed the back of his neck. “You can meet a lot of interesting people as an agent, too; though I have a bit of a reputation for making friends in strange places.”

(That, Ichigo found out, was an understatement. Part of the reason SDIU loved Stiles so much was because supernaturals loved _him._  Stiles was an excellent agent and respected mediator, but he was best known for his brilliant and innovative magic that seemed to do whatever Stiles wanted to do, no matter how impossible. It had gotten more than just pack out of precarious situations, and was also how Ichigo had acquired an adorable pet phoenix named Aya).

“So, are you coming?” Stiles asked.

“I thought Peter got along with his family?” Ichigo wondered, shaking off his reverie.

Stiles smirked. “He does. It's just that Talia's the only one who can make that vein throb in Peter's forehead, even when she's not around. And they’ve been talking on the phone all day.”

Ichigo went to dinner, was hand-fed green beans by Scott and Allison's youngest daughter, laughed at the increasingly atrocious names that Stiles suggested for his and Lydia's new baby, and was amazed at just how much Peter's vein throbbed. When Allison hugged him at the end of the night, something finally settled in him that he hadn't even realized was still broken.

That night, Ichigo hung the dreamcatcher in his bedroom. He started having strange dreams almost immediately.

Two weeks after that, he heard two voices in his head that he thought he’d never hear again.

Peter caught him openly crying into his breakfast the next morning, two barely-there spirits hovering on either side of him.

<> <>

_Twenty-five years later_

“Do you ever want to return to Japan?”

Ichigo startled out of his boredom-induced doze and stared incredulously at Lydia. She wanted to bring this up now, when they were trapped on a plane for eight hours?

On second thought, that's probably why she'd done it.

“We just got out of the conference from hell; can't I take a nap?” He leveled his best scowl at her, but she just rolled her eyes and patted his head like he was a puppy.

“You know you enjoy blowing their tiny little minds just as much as I do,” she admonished. “Now, answer the question.”

It was true. Between the two of them, and with Stiles's magical and Peter's financial support in the background, they had all but turned the medical field on its head within a decade. (Speaking of which, Ichigo made yet another mental note to never let Lydia, Stiles, or Peter meet Kisuke. The fallout would likely be astronomical).

“Why would I want to do that?” he frowned at her. “I'd just be torturing myself for no reason. I can't talk to anyone from my past.”

Except for Zangetsu and Shiro, of course, but Stiles insisted they didn't count because they were literally a part of him. He had explained it in greater detail, but Ichigo trusted that Stiles knew what he was talking about and had tuned him out halfway through the explanation.

The banshee was quiet for a moment. “I don't think that's entirely true,” Lydia admitted, watching her friend carefully for his reaction.

Ichigo actually felt lightheaded for a second before Zangetsu and Shiro both jumped in to push Ichigo to ask Lydia what she meant. Which, of course, was entirely unnecessary because Lydia could hear them just fine without Ichigo playing telephone for them.

His spirits probably would have manifested to talk to Lydia themselves if it weren't for the flight attendants wandering the aisles. His spirits--who in the beginning had only willingly manifested in front of the pack for training--were extraordinarily fond of Stiles and Lydia's children, and on some days spent more time with the Stilinskis than they did with Ichigo.

“There was a young man who introduced himself to me after the panel; a kid who was interested specifically in our work and thinking of going to medical school.” She paused. “He's also your eldest nephew and Yuzu’s son.”

The airplane could have gone down at that moment and Ichigo would have never noticed. Inside his head, even his spirits were shocked silent.

“He knows you,” she continued. “Not as family, of course, but professionally. That doesn't matter right now. What matters is that, if you want, you can get to know him. If you want to wait, the next oldest are Yuzu's twin daughters; they're still in middle school.”

“Even if…” _my nephew_ , “the boy introduced himself to you, he didn't have time to tell you about any sisters he had.”

The banshee tsked at him. “We've been keeping track of your family since you came to us. Pack looks out for each other, remember? Your family is our family, idiot. Besides, what exactly did you think we were building the pocket dimension for?”

Ichigo's brain screeched to a halt. What did that project have to do with anything?

Honestly, Ichigo had assumed that it was either boredom, or another one of Lydia, Stiles, and Peter’s potential “world domination” experiments. But it apparently wasn't?

Lydia sighed deeply, like she regretted everything in her life, and punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“The woman said that you weren't allowed to contact anyone from your old life in the human world, Hueco Mundo, or Soul Society, right?”

He nodded dumbly.

“So, if we're not in any of those places, the curse doesn't apply.”

“How--” Ichigo's thoughts were whirring. _How did you manage to build a portal to_ another dimension _? How long have you been_ trying _to build a portal to another dimension? How long have you been protecting my family for me? How can I ever repay you_?

Lydia nodded and narrowed her eyes at him like she knew what he was thinking. "Everybody loves Stiles, remember? There's evidently a prominent vampire coven that lives not far from Karakura; they look in on your friends and family for us. And we got most of the building materials from the dwarves, and you know how particular they are about their metalworking, so we had to wait an infuriating amount of time between each model test while they made sure everything was perfect on their end.”

A beat. Then, “I can't just leave you guys!” he complained.

The banshee stared at him like he was stupid. That had been happening a lot in the last few minutes (since he’d met Lydia, really), so Ichigo wasn't offended.

Because his genius friends had been spending their time and money for the last ten years finding a way for him to talk to his family.

“Of course not. We’d come with you,” she scoffed.

Ichigo squawked and nearly kicked the seat in front of him. “What, are you stupid? You can't just move everyone to Japan! What about the kids? What about your jobs? What about the rest of the Hale pack?”

“Harassment over the phone works just the same no matter where you are,” she said blithely. “And the kids already know. Surely, you’ve noticed them practicing their Japanese with you?”

He had, but he’d thought that it was just a phase, like the three months Aaron had spent pretending to be a federal agent like his dad, or the two weeks when Amelia wouldn't let anyone other than Zangetsu read her a bedtime story.

“Even Boyd's excited. I saw him reading up about tea ceremonies the other day.”

Ichigo blew out a breath and almost melted into his seat. How the hell did he get so lucky, twice?

“You don't have to come with me,” he told her.

Lydia gave him the same smirk she had that first day in the stairwell. “It's too late to get rid of us now, you should know that. We’re with you, always. Besides, Peter's getting bored, and that’s rarely a good thing. Breaking a curse ought to liven things up, don't you think?”

Her smile softened. “Trust me. In a few weeks, you’ll meet your nephew, and by the time he's ready for the werewolf reveal, we’ll either have figured out how to break the curse or have the pocket dimension ready for use.”

Fourteen months later, Ichigo and Stiles were at a lunch meeting with one of the local kitsune when Karin burst into the restaurant, flew into her brother's arms, and started sobbing into his shoulder. Yuzu arrived less than five minutes later, and immediately threw herself into the embrace as well.

By the time Karin and Yuzu managed to compose themselves and drag their brother to Urahara’s shop, his father, his friends, and Kisuke were all waiting for him. If Ichigo hadn't been living with werewolves for a decade, all of the touching would have been overwhelming.

Five days after reuniting with his family, Ichigo stepped foot in Soul Society for the first time in over two decades, Peter, Stiles, and Lydia at his back, and the future stretching out before him.

**Author's Note:**

> So...what did you think? Hopefully, somebody out there likes it.
> 
> Anyway, I’ll be posting three stories to my tiny bleach series right after this, so watch out for those.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
